THE FIRST step towards advancing our democracy is to ensure that our votes count. What that means is this: if a corrupt politician ‘A’ performs woefully in the first term, he or she should be voted out and, if possible, replaced with another corrupt politician ‘B’. If ‘B’ fails, he or she should be voted out and replaced with either ‘C’ or ‘A’ from the previous election. The principle is accountability, not perfection.
Our first major breakthrough will come when votes can always remove politicians. A democracy where the ballot cannot remove an incumbent is a jungle. Good democracies do not reward failure with continuity. Our politicians must learn that they stay in office by performance, not by entitlement.
The argument for 2027 cannot be narrowed to any individual. What should matter to us is entrenching the culture of ensuring that our votes count at all times, and no one should be allowed to configure the system in such a way that the levers of control are domiciled in his or her bedroom.
The issue at hand is not about removing Tinubu, but about refusing to reward a government that has performed abysmally with a continuity vote. Once the culture of rejecting woeful performance is entrenched in our polity, the system will naturally begin to shape the character of our political elite. Where votes do not count, impunity, might, anarchy, propaganda, and bigotry drive the system.
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Those who say that recycled politicians cannot be used to replace Tinubu have yet to understand the challenge we face. The success we recorded in 2015 must not be a one-off feat. That feat ought to have been replicated in 2019, when it was clear that then-President Muhammadu Buhari was not in charge and his regime had been hijacked by unprecedented, mindless looters and unpatriotic elements. 2023 provided another chance to push out the APC for their woeful performance, but it was bungled.
It is disappointing to hear some enlightened voices on this issue today. One cannot tell if they are sincere or subtly mischievous. People often temper their words to avoid offending entrenched interests. Otherwise, why argue that Tinubu cannot be replaced with any politician because they are all corrupt and are recycled?
Do we abandon the virtue of voting and grant Tinubu continuity because no saint waits in the wings? Democracy produces no saints. It enforces accountability.
What I have seen so far from the ongoing discussion is intellectual dishonesty. The PDP, in sixteen years, did not perform as badly as the APC has in ten years. Worse still, there is a deliberate effort to diabolically shrink the political space and make it almost impossible for the opposition to operate. The state is already inching toward a one-party state — a situation Tinubu himself struggled against in 2003 when the PDP planned to take over the entire Western Nigeria.
Bessie Amelia Head, the South African writer in her novel When Rain Clouds Gather, wrote: “It is better to have a society with promiscuous women than to have a society without women at all.
Let us stop deceiving ourselves. It is better to have a democracy with a strong opposition made up of recycled politicians than to have a democracy without opposition at all. The risk of putting all of Nigeria under one man’s control, with no opposition like in Lagos State, is better imagined than experienced.
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The claim that the APC tsunami of 2015 was justified because Buhari was expected to fight corruption and bring sanity is an indictment on the intelligentsia. I’m stunned we entrusted our future to a man whose mind was locked up – no lectures, no books – despite decades in public service.
A man with no grasp of the economy, schooled only in military instruction, and with no clear political ideology anyone can define today.
Our democracy is evolving. All of us have a responsibility to raise our voices and advocate that our votes count at all times, irrespective of who it produces. If a free and fair contest rewards failure, so be it. If it says no to failure, all well and good.
Democracy is currently the best form of government because it lets citizens correct their mistakes when they realise their electoral judgment was wrong.
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The argument for 2027 cannot be narrowed to any individual. What should matter to us is entrenching the culture of ensuring that our votes count at all times, and no one should be allowed to configure the system in such a way that the levers of control are domiciled in his or her bedroom.
No democracy in the world rewards failure with continuity. And no country should say that because there are no saints in the land, the rot in government should continue. It is strong democratic structures and institutions that shape the character of politicians, and arguments that encourage an individual to assert his influence over the system because there are no saints in the land amount to intellectual fraud.
We were taught in school that liberal democracy stands on a tripod of free choice through fair elections, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights. None of these exists today in our democracy. So, what can we call what we have?
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No one can go out today to peacefully demonstrate against the government, let alone do what we did in 2012.
The judiciary is not what it used to be, and our rights have been subtly trampled upon. Let us leave propaganda and intellectual dishonesty alone. No organic system can take off one day and reach its peak that same day.
Our democracy is evolving. All of us have a responsibility to raise our voices and advocate that our votes count at all times, irrespective of who it produces. If a free and fair contest rewards failure, so be it. If it says no to failure, all well and good.
